The first person that Gary Dorrien focuses on his book The New Abolition is Henry McNeal Turner, a leading figure in the AME Church and an outspoken voice of black nationalism. Turner was a pioneer of the blackness of God. He argued that African-Americans could not be self-respecting and not believe in a black God. Better to be atheists.

He had been a legislator in the early days of Reconstruction but lost hope in America as Reconstruction was abandoned. He wrote, defending the contributions of African-Americans to American culture:

We have pioneered civilization here; we have built up your country; we have worked in your fields, and garnered your harvests, for two hundred and fifty years! And what do we ask of you in return? Do we ask you for compensation for the sweat our fathers bore for you--for the tears you have caused, and the hearts you have broken, and the lives you have curtailed, and the blood you have spilled? Do we ask retaliation? We ask it not. We are willing to let the dead past bury its dead; but we ask you, now, for our RIGHTS.

Gives us some perspective to note that Turner wrote the obituary for the Republican party of abolition and civil rights in 1877, saying it was "slaughtered in the house of its friends" when it abandoned Reconstruction. Though Turner gave up hope that America do anything but get worse for African Americans, so he advocated that people should disrupt the system "Vote any way in your power to overthrow, destroy, ruin, blot out, divide, crush, dissolve, wreck, consume, demolish, disorganize, suppress, subvert, smash, shipwreck, crumble, nullify, upset, uproot, expunge, and fragmentize this nation, until it learns to deal justly with the black man. This is all the advice I have to give."